Publications
The Green Climate Fund issues a range of publications for our direct and indirect stakeholders on a diversity of issues – for the general public to industry experts. Stay in tune with our mission and activities around the planet with the issues that speak to you.
Featured publications
Country platforms for climate finance
This brochure describes GCF’s approach to country platforms, including an overview of the concept, the potential impact and the end-to-end support GCF can provide.
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Locally Led Climate Action
The Green Climate Fund is committed to ensuring climate finance reaches the most vulnerable and to scaling up direct access through Locally Led Climate Action (LLCA).
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GCF in Brief: Direct access
December 2021
One of the Green Climate Fund’s distinctive features is the provision for developing countries to access financial resources through national entities, meaning that climate finance can be channelled to the country directly. This factsheet explains how direct access works and the support provided for direct access Accredited Entities.
GCF in Brief: Complementarity and coherence
December 2021
GCF is committed to ensuring that our activities complement those of other funds, and that together we have a coherent approach to supporting the climate ambitions of developing countries. Complementarity refers to synergies among the various climate funds’ activities in similar sectors and themes (adaptation or mitigation), and even across regions of similar characteristics, with the aim of scaling up transformative actions. Coherence is about using country programming to seek alignment with...
Accelerating and scaling up climate innovation: How the Green Climate Fund’s approach can deliver new climate solutions for developing countries
November 2021
Climate innovation is critical to avert catastrophic climate change, but investment in new climate solutions is hampered by a range of barriers. This Working Paper first identifies the main barriers to climate innovation in developing countries, focusing on each stage of the innovation chain, from the emergence of innovation to its deployment and eventual widespread adoption. Many of these barriers are related to the policy and regulatory environment as well as to technical and macro-economic...
Towards a Long-Term Vision on Complementarity GEF and GCF Collaboration
November 2021
This document presents a Long-Term Vision on Complementarity and Coherence collaboration between the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), herein after referred to as LTV. This new vision aims to build on the Pilot Coordinated Engagement exercise the GCF and GEF have been carrying out since 2018, and further define specific areas of cooperation, where complementarity of action might be most efficient and effective, and possible modalities to generate long-lasting...
Enhancing Direct Access Guidelines
November 2021
The Green Climate Fund (GCF), Enhancing Direct Access (EDA) pilot intends to boost access by sub-national, national and regional, public, and private entities to GCF climate finance. EDA promotes country ownership of projects and programmes and devolves decision-making to local actors. This publication provides non-prescriptive guidance about how to structure an EDA Pilot intervention. It is primarily intended to support GCF Direct Access Entities (DAEs), National Designated Authorities and...
Upscaling climate resilience measures in the dry corridor agroecosystems of El Salvador (RECLIMA)
October 2021
Located in the dry corridor of Central America, El Salvador is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate risks in the world. At present, it is already facing water stress, with the per capita availability of freshwater well below the critical threshold of 1,700cubic metres per capita per year. Projected increases in the variability of rainfall, temperature, and occurrence of extreme weather events threaten the food and water security of farming ...
Thematic brief: Oceans
October 2021
Oceans and coastal ecosystems cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, providing a natural asset of enormous significance to protect our planet, preserve and enhance local economic growth, promote regional stability and conserve global biodiversity. This generates vital ecosystem goods and services that support our future, such as climate and temperature regulation, absorption of carbon emissions, fisheries, food security, coastal protection, tourism services and jobs. Marine...
Thematic brief: Leveraging equity finance to scale up climate innovation & investment
October 2021
Over the past decade, blended finance – which uses public funds to share risk and crowd-in private investment through co-financing - has usually taken the form of relatively safe senior debt rather than more risky instruments such as equity or guarantees that could have higher leveraging ratios and better meet the needs of private investors to finance the emergence, deployment and widespread adoption of new climate solutions. Equity is essential for young companies, particularly in developing...
Thematic brief: Agriculture and food security
October 2021
Farmers are facing unprecedented interlinked global shocks and challenges that threaten the gains in global food security and poverty reduction in recent years. Since most agriculture is rainfed in developing countries, climate change directly impacts agriculture by increasing temperatures and changing when and how much it rains. Most of the seeds, animals, and farming practices providing the world’s food are less productive as the climate changes, having been developed for past climates. Hence...
Cooling facility
October 2021
As global temperatures increase and the demand for cooling rises, so do the emission levels of greenhouse and fluorinated gases, which have a very high global warming potential. Reports cite that at 1.5°C of warming – a threshold that could be reached by 2030 - 2.3 billion people could be vulnerable to illness and death from heatwave events (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2019) and productivity loss could be the equivalent of 80 million full-time jobs (International Labor...
Global fund for coral reefs investment window (GFCR)
October 2021
Coral reefs are among the world’s most threatened ecosystems by climate change impacts. And drivers such as overfishing, agricultural run-off, sewage discharge and unsustainable tourism degrade the coral reefs, further decreasing their chance of survival. Studies have shown that local management of such threats can alleviate the impacts of climate change on the coral reefs. Thus, supporting and providing capital to businesses and companies for the sustainable use of ocean resources can...
The Amazon bioeconomy fund
October 2021
Home to the world’s largest tropical forest, the Amazon is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. The combination of increased temperatures and human-induced deforestation are creating adverse climate feedback loops. Increasingly warmer and drier conditions will further result in forest degradation and loss of ecological functions, ultimatelybringingtheAmazonforeststothepointofnoreturn. Known as the tipping point, there may come a time when the forests die and are replaced by dry savannah...
Thematic brief: Adaptation
October 2021
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is committed to investing in developing countries’ efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change. GCF is delivering on our targets for adaptation and resilience by ensuring a 50/50 balance in allocation of funding between mitigation and adaptation projects, with over 50% of adaptation funding going to Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) and African States. The Fund is uniquely placed to attract private investment by de-...
SAP Compendium
September 2021
A key element that drives the simplification of the preparation of a SAP proposal is the clarity, at the onset, of what are the activities that can be eligible for the GCF simplified approval. This is one of the main elements that this Compendium offers to all those involved in originating a SAP intervention. If you work in a GCF Accredited Entity, or if you are a GCF National Designated Authority or Focal Point, or a consultant involved in preparing a GCF SAP project, thisCompendium is ...
Thematic brief: Climate resilient infrastructure
August 2021
Infrastructure is key to many sectors including transportation, telecommunications, water, and energy, and it plays an important role within agriculture and health. Strong interdependencies mean that damages to a single infrastructure asset may cause a ‘domino effect’ of failures across systems. These damages have increasingly been caused by more extreme weather events linked to climate change – leading to billions of dollars of repair, loss of life and security for millions of people around...
Thematic brief: Forests and land use
May 2021
Forests are crucial for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing climate change adaptation. Healthy forests are more resilient to climate impacts. However, forest cover loss continues rapidly, contributing approximately 13 per cent of annual global net carbon emissions, mostly related to tropical deforestation and unsustainable forest management. Financing forest conservation and restoration is difficult because many forest benefits are not monetized. Financial incentives of activities...
Thematic brief: Ecosystems & ecosystem services
May 2021
Ecosystems consist of plants, animal and microorganism communities (including for example, rainforests, coral reefs, agricultural land and managed forests), while ecosystem goods and services are the benefits to human society that ecosystems provide (for example, water provision and flood and storm protection). Ecosystem degradation and the impacts of climate change release the carbon that is stored in biomass and soils, and increase the risk of ecological collapse. Land-use change,...
Scaling up climate finance in the context of Covid-19: Full report
May 2021
This report aims to help financial decision-makers to align finance with sustainable development, accelerating the transition to a net-zero, climate resilient economy, based on the latest scientific findings and policy developments. It proposes four interventions to achieve this objective in the context of Covid-19.
Thematic brief: Renewable energy
April 2021
The energy sector is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions given the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. At the same time, hundreds of millions of people still lack access to electricity, and a third of the world’s population lack access to clean energy sources for cooking. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this means that renewable energy must supply 70 to 85 per cent of all electricity by 2050 for the world to meet the goals of the Paris...